Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?
Our opening sequence for ‘Ebony’ is of the Thriller/Drama genre. To create a thrilling feel within our sequence, we made good use of generic cinematography, sound, editing and mis-en-scene conventions by using a range of angles such as low angled shots to highlight intimidating characters and high angled shots to highlight vulnerable characters, eerie non-diagetic music layered over diagetic sound to create a sense of foreboding, short, snappy cuts to create a sense of tension and mystery by providing glimpses of the storyline at a fast pace without giving too much information away, and believable locations and props to create an authentic feel within each of the scenes within our opening sequence. The drama aspect is reflected through the typical ‘normal’ setting of our film and the ordinary ‘every day’ characters as they converge to indicate that the occurrences within the film are out of the ordinary and so are not anticipated, therefore creating the aspect of drama which also contributes to the thrilling impact the film has the events are more shocking and unanticipated, where as they wouldn’t be in typical Thriller/Horror hybrid films.
Our plot both complies with and deviates from typical thriller film conventions as the run down building (captive place) location within our film has a very dark, grungy feel to it and so has the typical aesthetics that a thriller film has, but the rest of our film is set within college and follows three girls’ lives, deviating from the norm of a male character that generally creates the chaos within a thriller.


To create an authentic thrilling feel, we also took inspiration from the title sequence of ‘Se7en’ as the identity of a character is hidden within it, and the identities of characters are hidden in our title sequence as faces are blurred out and kept out of shots. We also liked the style of the titles within this opening sequence and how they jittered and look distorted, so we also used this idea for our titles.





How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our product focuses on the representation of teenage girls and the stereotyping that occurs within their lives. To represent this, we have deliberately created characters whose aesthetics appeal strongly to late teenage girls (a large proportion of our target audience, 15 – 25 year old females) and so mean that our audience instantly stereotype the characters within our film. For example, we wanted to portray Lily as the innocent girl within the group, and so made her aesthetically plan and dainty looking through minimal make up and floaty dresses, and also had her speak in a shy, quiet manner to express this further; we wanted to portray Nicole as the popular, self-indulged girl, so we made her look very high maintenance through the use of make up, hair extensions and girly clothes, but also had her speak in a confident, bold tone; and finally, we wanted Ebony to be the outcast of the three girls, and so had her wear dark eye make up, have messy hair and dress differently to make her stand out aesthetically, yet we made her character seem quite withdrawn vocally, but mysterious through the use of camera shots, for example, her eyes as they watch Lily, and so an overall odd, shifty character is created. We believe that all three girls would be instantly stereotyped by our target audience due to their aesthetics and first impressions as we know that teenage girls base a lot of their judgements on people on their aesthetics and first impressions of them, so meaning an understanding is created between audience and characters, leaving room for emotions to be felt for and towards the characters within our film.








What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We decided that our film would be most appropriate to be made as a British film as it focuses on a specific group of people and the social stereotypes and attitudes these people hold, therefore meaning our film would have a niche audience and so would benefit from being produced with a small budget. Due to our film being British, we then created the name ‘Regal Pictures’ for our production company as it relates directly to the monarchy, something specific to Britain.
Knowing that our film would be a British one, we then decided that the company ‘Optimum Releasing’ would be ideal for distributing our film as it has distributed films such as ‘This is England’ which was also a British film with a niche audience, yet proved to be a very successful film, showing that the company specialises in promoting films with similar themes to ours.
I don’t believe our film would be fit for a lot of franchising or merchandising, so I think it would be successful to have the film distributed to independent cinemas across the UK, and that it would also be ideal for Film4 to support the film and air it on Channel 4 so people around the country could view the film on television, therefore making the film more accessible to the people it is aimed at and potentially widening its audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience is predominantly females between the ages of 15 – 25, although it could possibly also appeal to males within that age range. We believe that our film will target females mainly as it focuses on how relationships between females can change due to bullying and manipulation, and so we believe our target audience could relate to the film in terms of the setting and the events that unfold within the characters’ lives (for example, our target audience will mainly be in high school/college/university and may have been in one of the situations one of the characters has), and ultimately, their emotions during these times, therefore creating a strong emotional link between characters and the audience, forcing them to become more involved with the film.
We created a questionnaire and asked our peers, both male and female, to answer some questions relating to thriller films. From this, we found that our target audience believe that suspense, jumpy parts and scary music all contribute to creating a good thriller film, and so I believe that our opening sequence would appeal to our target audience as we use eerie music within it to create suspense, and also use the sudden drop of a brick to also create a jumpy part within it.
I believe that the certificate 15 would be most appropriate for our film as it features threatening ideas and subtle violence without dwelling on it, and could possibly also include frequent use of strong language. I also believe this certificate to be appropriate as our film is similar to the film ‘Captivity’, which is rated 18, as both that and our film surround the captivity of a character and how they’re tormented, but our film is less graphic and dwells less on the physical torment of characters and more on the psychological torment and impacts that it can have on relationships and lives, therefore making it a less harsh representation of the idea of torment than ‘Captivity’ is.

How did you attract/address your audience?
We used camerawork to try and create a sense of empathy between the audience and the characters. For example, within the scenes where Nicole, Ebony and Lily meet, we use high angle shots of Lily to make her look vulnerable, low angle shots of Ebony to make her look menacing, and face on shots of Nicole to make her look neutral; this instantly indicates the hierarchy of the characters to the audience, but also fits in with stereotyping as more information is given out and more assumptions can be made as the story progresses. We also created characters with contrasting personalities so that there is a greater chance of the target audience being able to relate to at least one of the characters within the story.

What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
Over the year, we have progressed from using handheld cameras to Sony DV1000 high definition cameras. Overall, I felt that the cameras were easy to work with and provided us with a crisp, clear image that was easy to manipulate afterwards. The only downside to the camera is its zoom as it wasn’t quite long enough to be able to achieve a shot that we’d storyboarded (the one that zooms from Ebony’s eye to Nicole’s legs,) however we overcame this as we believed the shot that we managed to get was adequate, and even if we changed our mind afterwards, there was the option to recreate a more intricate zoom using the Final Cut Express software on the Macs. On a couple occasions we faced problems whilst filming, yet these weren’t due to the camera, they were due to background noise interfering with conversation within some of our shots, and the inaccessibility to our tape on one occasion which lost us valuable filming time, but we made up for this time sharply in order to not fall behind in our project.
The editing software Final Cut Express proved to be brilliant and I feel that I have learnt a significant amount about editing since using it. For example, I have learnt how to distort film and titles, how to overlap film and speech, how to change the volume of overlapping layers and how key frames work to create different visual effects, for example, a screen split into four sections.






Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I believe that pre production is vital as we produced a storyboard, script and shooting script before filming our final piece, whereas we had none of these before filming our preliminary task, and so filming was easier to do as there was a set order to do things in so time was saved as shots didn’t have to be thought about while on set.
I also feel that we felt more confident using the camera equipment as we chose to use different angles and framing in our final product, whereas we stuck to basics in our preliminary task. We also used tilts and pans in a smoother manner and so this helped to contribute to the overall professional look of our final product.
Overall, I believe that our final product fulfils the brief that we were set as it complies with typical Thriller film genre conventions to give it an authentic thrilling feel that we discovered would appeal to our target audience, we used the camera equipment confidently and practiced shots to achieve the best possible outcome, and also made effective use of the editing software available to try and give an overall aesthetically appealing look to our film.